The Guantanamo base housed more than 45,000 Cuban and Haitian refugees who were picked up at sea during the last mass migration in the Caribbean in the mid-1990s. It also served as a logistics hub for U.S. ships and flights ferrying aid to Haiti after the catastrophic earthquake in January 2010.

But most of the personnel involved in those operations have moved on to other assignments.

"We rotate in and out of our jobs a lot," Crichton said. "We have a turnover of about every two to three years."

Sounds like its a pretty standard exercise they have been doing for some time now.